This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Killings in a black American church stir worst memories of the 1960s

Mass shooting in Charleston recalls bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where four little girls were killed in a 1963 outrage. Americans have been prompted to debate just how much has changed in the country’s race relations.

A photograph of the four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is part of a video documenting the turmoil of that era for visitors to the church. (Gary Crall)

This large crater is the result of a bomb that exploded near a basement room of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. on Sept. 15, 1963, killing four black girls. (AP file photo)

By Alexander PanettaThe Canadian Press

Thu., June 18, 2015

WASHINGTON—First came the allegations of police brutality. Then buildings torched during inner-city riots. And now the cold-blooded killing of black worshippers in a church.

It’s like a barrage of bad memories from America’s past, unwanted flashbacks from the 1960s rattling the notion that civil-rights struggles are a relic of history.

The cruelest of those memories has been stirred in a South Carolina church, where a gunman murdered nine parishioners Wednesday after spending an hour with them in Bible study.

It was painfully poignant for Arthur Price’s parish.

He’s pastor at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where four little girls were killed in a 1963 bombing that horrified the country.

Article Continued Below

Price said his parishioners have instantly recognized parallels between the latest killings and those that occurred 52 years ago in their church.

“This city, this community, knows the toll that hatred can take,” Price said.

“It’s a memory etched into many people’s minds who lived through that period. Just like we never forget 9-11. We never forget Sept. 15, 1963.”

They weren’t alone in noticing the similarity.

President Barack Obama mentioned the Alabama incident while speaking about Wednesday’s shootings: “The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history.”

He repeated a call for gun control that he himself admitted was futile, given the current Congress.

But he said he’d been forced to deliver too many mournful statements after mass-killings and expressed hope that the U.S. will eventually reconsider its gun policies.

Moments earlier, the suspected gunman had been caught. Dylann Roof was arrested at a traffic stop a few hours from the crime scene.

The FBI opened a hate-crime investigation. An old social-media photo showed Roof wearing a jacket with patches from apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia.

In a poignant coincidence of timing, it was the symbol on Roof’s license plate that remained relevant in a contemporary debate Thursday. The stars-and-bars flag of the Confederate south still flies outside the South Carolina legislature and in nine states is allowed on vanity license plates such as Roof’s.

It could have been allowed in a 10th state Thursday — but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against people suing the Texas state government for that right.

Americans have been prompted to debate just how much has changed in the country, in a difficult year for race relations dating back to last summer’s Ferguson riots.

Consider that the unemployment gap between blacks and whites is the same as 1963.

Among Fortune 500 companies, less than one per cent have black CEOs.

Deaths during police interventions have prompted a push for officers to wear body cameras — a cause championed by Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of Wednesday’s victims.

Pinckney, a state politician and pastor of Mother Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, took up the cause after the fatal police shooting of Walter Scott.

The tragedy of American race relations is chiseled into the history of Pinckney’s church: it was tied to a planned slave revolt in 1822, was subsequently burned to the ground and later attracted prominent civil-rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr.

Over in Birmingham, Reverend Price said much has changed since the attack on his parish.

It took 14 years to file federal charges in the killing of the four schoolgirls. Witnesses wouldn’t talk. A young white lawyer who denounced the killings was chased out of town.

It took 14 hours to arrest the suspect.

“Fifty years ago, blacks and whites couldn’t sit at the same lunch counter. They couldn’t go to the same swimming pools. They couldn’t go to the same schools,” Price said. “African-Americans couldn’t run for the office of mayor or be considered for police commissioner or fire chief.”

Many other things have changed: the life-expectancy gap has closed, high-school graduation rates are nearly the same. While less than one per cent of Congress was African-American in 1963, it’s almost 10 per cent today.

As Price was being interviewed, a two-term African-American president was speaking on TV.

“Many things have changed,” Price said.

“Overall, the country is in a better place. Better doesn’t mean we’ve arrived. But it means that things are better than 50 years ago.”

Delivered dailyThe Morning Headlines Newsletter

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com